Apologia Diffidentis

This book contains a few words in Greek. English transliterations of these words can be viewed by hovering the mouse pointer over them. Apologia Diffidentis By W. C ompton L eith London: John Lane, The Bodley Head. New York: John Lane Company MCMXVII Third Edition Printed in Great Britain by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh "I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel been able to effront or enharden me." Sir Thomas Browne I n the matter of avowals the diffident never speak if they can write. That is why my apology for a furtive existence is here set down in solitude instead of being told face to face. You have borne so many years with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last constrains me to this poor defence; for I must either justify myself in your sight, or go far away where even your kindness cannot reach me. The first alternative is hard, but the second too grievous for impaired powers of endurance; I must therefore find what expression I may, and tell you how my life has been beshrewed ever since, a boy of twelve, I first incurred the obloquy of being shy. The word slips easily from the pen though the lips refuse to frame it; for I think most men would rather plead guilty to a vice than to this weakness. A doom of reticence is upon all our shy confraternity, and we seldom make confidences even to each other. It is only at rarest intervals that the spell is lifted, by silent sympathy, by a smile, by a tear, by I know not what. At such times our souls are like those deep pools of the shore, only open to the sky at lowest tides of still summer days, only to be approached across long stretches of wet sand and slippery shelves of rock. In their depths are delicate fronded seaweeds and shells tinted with hues of sundawn; but to see them you must bend low over the surface, which no lightest breath must furrow, or the vision is gone. Few of the busy toilers of the world will leave the firm sands to see so little; but sometimes one weary of keen life will stray aside, and oftener a child will come splashing across the beach to peer down with artless curiosity and delight. Then the jealous ocean returns, and the…